PORT-AU-PRINCE – Haiti’s government and its aid partners were fighting yesterday to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 138 people in the nation’s worst medical emergency since the January 12th earthquake.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the outbreak of the virulent diarrhoeal disease, which by Thursday had affected 1,526 people, is the first cholera epidemic in a century in the disaster-prone Caribbean nation, already the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.
The Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies were rushing doctors, medical supplies and clean water to Saint-Marc in the Artibonite region, the main outbreak zone north of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The region is Haiti’s central breadbasket and had received tens of thousands of fleeing survivors of the January 12th earthquake, which killed up to 300,000 people and injured thousands more, traumatising the long-suffering population.
Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the government was very worried about the disease spreading to the earthquake survivors’ camps in Port-au-Prince.
“Yes, it is a cholera epidemic,” Dr Michel Thieren, an official with the Pan American Health Organization, the regional office for WHO, said. It was not possible to say whether the epidemic was at its peak, Dr Thieren said, but it was definitely not over.
Haitian president René Préval had confirmed cholera was the cause of the fast-spreading, acute diarrhoea that overwhelmed hospitals in central Haiti in recent days with weakened, dehydrated patients. Many of the victims died in a matter of hours.
Officials had been awaiting the final results of laboratory tests to determine the cause of the diarrhoea, occurring mostly in the Lower Artibonite and Central Plateau regions.
Reports of more cases were still coming in.
“Now we are making sure people are fully aware of precautionary measures they have to take to prevent contamination,” Mr Préval told Reuters after meeting government officials through the night.
Cholera, which usually results from consuming water or food contaminated with cholera bacteria, is not likely to spread from person to person.
Amid fears that the deadly disease could spread to crowded earthquake survivors’ camps in the wrecked capital, where some 1.5 million people are living in tents and under tarpaulins, health minister Alex Larsen announced an emergency prevention programme.
He urged people to regularly wash their hands, not to eat raw vegetables, to boil all food and drinking water, and to avoid bathing in and drinking from rivers.
Aid groups were sending medicines and clean water supplies to affected zones.
“This disease is very dangerous,” Mr Larsen said. “It can kill in three hours, because once the diarrhoea starts it doesn’t stop.” He urged people not to panic, saying the deadly dehydration caused by cholera could be easily treated by drinking boiled water mixed with sugar and salt.
A massive international relief effort had prevented any serious outbreaks of infectious diseases in the capital immediately after the earthquake. – (Reuters)